06.11.08
Google Maps Claim to Fame
C.R.A.Z.Y.
06.09.08
iPhone If Only
I’m glad I haven’t bought an iPhone (yet):
“If I’d spent that original US$599 on Apple stock instead, I’d be able to buy a new iPhone 3G and have about US$599 in assets to my name.”
05.13.08
Social Networking
Myspace and LinkedIn and Facebook, oh my!
I set up a myspace page probably 2 years ago. Then I got around to creating a linkedin page. And a few weeks ago, I finally drank the kool-aid and joined facebook.
Of course getting in touch with old friends and keeping it touch with new ones is nice. But what’s been really interesting is discovering the ways that my friends know each other. I’ve already had a handful of experiences now where I’ve been shocked to discover that “friend A who I met in college and friend B who I met at a summer camp met each other on the other side of the world, and now they are friends.” I can’t imagine how else I would have ever discovered these random connections.
The world is getting way too small.
05.12.08
Mark Driscoll Fan
While I may despise Facebook on principle, I was finally sucked in a couple of weeks ago. When I tried to become friends with Mark Driscoll, I was unable to do so because apparently Facebook has a limit on the number of friends you can have (5000 I believe). So I had to become a fan of his. Is Facebook just utterly lame?
Mark posted a nice sarcastic video on his “fan page” to express his despair at the fact that I cannot be his friend (well, not me personally, but the collective “we” that may want to be his friend).
10.15.07
Drew Carey, Libertarian
- Ever wonder what gives the government the power to just take away your family’s home?
- Ever worry that the medicine that keeps you alive might be declared illegal by the Feds?
- Ever think that the government doesn’t always know best?
Check out reason.tv
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Led Zeppelin Online
Late to the party, Led Zeppelin to sell music online.
Well, it’s not a big deal to me because I already own the box set, but interesting to see one of the last hold-outs come around to online music sales.
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07.03.07
From the John Madden School for the Obvious
Amy and I have a running joke that when someone states the obvious that they are making a “John Madden” observation. It’s not that I don’t like John Madden, but often his commentary is a simple regurgitation of the patently obvious (”after a play like that, you just have to pick up the ball and keep pushing forward”).
So in that spirit, I want to know why we needed researchers to tell us this:
Video Games May Divert Kids From Homework: Playing video games may mean spending less time reading or doing homework, according to new research on video games and children.
How is this newsworthy? Did we really need scientific research to prove this? Is John Madden now performing scientific research?
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06.11.07
Interesting Islands and Lakes
Who has time to come up with this stuff?
The Island and Lake Combination
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06.07.07
What I’m Reading
I’ve recently lamented at the fact that I’ve become such a Google freak. You really must check out the new Google Reader. One intriguing feature is the ability to quickly share items that you are reading. When you mark an item to share, Google adds this item to a publicly available list. This list is published as a regular web page and as a feed.
The thought occurred to me that I could create a script to extract data from that feed and publish a “what I’m reading” module on my blog. This would allow me to modify my blog by simply marking items as “shared” in the Google Reader and these links would then auto-magically appear on my blog!
Well, if you look to the side-bar on the right, you can see my new “What I’m Reading” feature. I’m currently parsing the XML using PHP, but maybe later I’ll turn this into an AJAX script to improve performance and allow for background processing of the list.
In the mean time, if you want the PHP code, leave a comment.
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05.31.07
Google Street View
If you haven’t yet heard about Google’s new Street View feature, where have you been? Here’s the view from Hyde and Lombard in SF.
Here’s an article on how they are accomplishing this: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/31/google_maps_zoom_her.html
Update: Google Streets has certain brought out the Orwellian/Huxleyan conspiracy theorists. But maybe we actually have something to worry about. I decided to follow that little red car from my Lombard Street link above and found that the car’s license plate is easily viewable. Is a line being crossed? Are we moving into a world where “as long as you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear?”
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05.30.07
Surface Computing
Wow.
Microsoft unveils revolutionary device
“New top-secret ‘Surface’ will change the way we look at computing”
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05.29.07
Google Gadgets
Okay, I’m addicted. The Google Personal Homepage (now called “iGoogle“) is my new internet crack-cocaine. Especially addictive is the Google Reader for reading RSS blog feeds. Now I don’t have to visit a bunch of individual websites to find out what is going on in the blogosphere (not that I’ve never used a feed reader before, but this is the best I’ve seen).
I used to use “my.yahoo.com” as my homepage, but I’ve completely sold out on iGoogle now. The ability to add gadgets to my page is a huge selling point. Especially with gadgets like this one.
For any Fresnans out there, I’ve even created my own Google gadget so you can see what song is currently playing on 105.9 Jack FM from the comfort of your own iGoogle page.
You can make your own Google Gadgets too!
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05.09.07
Pachelbel Rant
Rob Paravonian is stinking hilarious. Check out his rant against Pachelbel who apparently has managed to become the bane of all cellists.
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04.17.07
Disable Hibernation for NUnit and Test Runner Performance
*Geek Alert*
I don’t usually blog about programming related stuff, but I stumbled across something today that made a big difference in performance on my computer. For a while now, I’ve been using NUnit and TestRunner with Visual Studio .NET 2005. Using these tools I’ve been able to deliver more stable releases with a greater level of confidence that my software will function properly. My greatest frustration with TestRunner and NUnit have been poor performance at times. I have a 1.83 GHz dual core CPU and 2 GB of RAM, so I’ve been wondering why I would experience such sluggishness.
For a totally unrelated reason, I recently changed my Windows Explorer folder options to make hidden system files visible. When I did this, I noticed a file in C:\ called hiberfil.sys. I figured this had something to do with the hibernation capability of Windows. The file size was 2 GB, exactly the same size as my memory. I had an epiphany, realizing that this file was probably being updated regularly to enable me to hibernate my computer.
So, when did I last hibernate my laptop? Umm… Never! So, I opened up the “Power Options” window in my control panel, selected the “Hibernate” tab and unchecked the “Enable hibernation” checkbox. The hiberfil.sys file in C:\ magically disappeared.
I continued my work day, and a while later noticed that my NUnit tests were running much more quickly. TestRunner was blazing through my unit tests and performance metrics at about 50-80% faster speeds. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it could have been that caused the performance increase, but then I realized it was related to shutting off the Hibernate “feature” of windows.
I’m guessing that most people never use hibernation. Even if people don’t use it, if the primary use of a computer is word processing and ‘net surfing, then any performance hit is probably negligible. But for memory intensive operations (hmm… like unit testing?) that hibernation file seems to incur a large performance hit.
So, to all you computer users out there (programmers or not), I’d recommend that you shut of hibernation as well, unless you actually use it.
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11.15.06
My New Phone
I am loving my new phone.
I highly recommend acquiring one.
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11.02.06
Machines will rule if we don’t curb surveillance
The Daily Mail (a British news magazine) is waking up to the sadly obvious: ‘Machines will rule if we don’t curb surveillance’.
The Information Commissioner stressed that while much of the current data collected on individuals was “fragmented”, the real danger to individual freedoms would come if all this information was gathered under a “Big Brother” regime.
“Two years ago I said ‘are we in danger of sleep walking into a surveillance society’. Our report commissioned from external experts really says we are already there. We are waking up to a surveillance society,” he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
George Orwell may have been off by a couple of decades (1984), but his prophetic tellings appear to be coming true. And in the very country he anticipated this happening.
Huxley’s dystopia is revealing as well: brave new world.
Let’s hope it isn’t too late to prove Orwell and Huxley wrong.
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04.28.06
Light Speed in Marina del Rey
Wow.
Multiband, a residential provider of voice and data systems, said this week that it plans to deliver 45-Mbit services to homes and condominiums in a ritzy Southern California suburb.
SoCal Suburb To Get 45-Mbit Internet Service
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04.12.06
Statism vs. Libertarianism
The immigration debate that is raging across the U.S. right now is leading to the production of some great philosophical discussion. A major component in how people view this debate relates to foundational suppositions regarding the role of government. I appreciate Arnold Kling’s treatment of these issues. Here’s an excerpt:
I do not expect the world to move toward transnational libertarianism in the foreseeable future. Right now, other ideologies predominate. Islamofascism, an ideology of tribal domination, is very prominent. Transnational progressivism, which favors world government and socialism, is the opposite of transnational libertarianism. And then there is statist collectivism, which is far more popular than transnational libertarianism.
I am cautiously hopeful that the trend might be away from statist collectivism and toward transnational libertarianism.
So are you a statist collectivist? A transnational libertarian? An Islamofascist (how cool it would be to actually have an islamofascist reading my blog!)?
Read more and be enlightened: TCS Daily - Tribal Politics
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04.05.06
Just Maybe I’d Consider a Mac…
This is quite an interesting development.
Shares in Apple Computer Inc. surged Wednesday after the computer maker unveiled software to help owners of its new Intel-based Macs run not only its own operating system but also Microsoft Corp.’s rival Windows XP system.
Apple Unveils Software to Run Windows XP - Yahoo! News
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03.03.06
A Meditation On the Speed Limit
I remember when California had 55 mile an hour speed limits state wide and I had forgotten just how slow that really is. What I didn’t know was that there are still well travelled highways in the U.S. with a maximum posted speed limit of 55mph. To reveal the absurdity, check out what these Georgia State University students produced.
A Meditation On the Speed Limit - Google Video
02.10.06
The Way of the 8-track
While I’m not big on computer gaming, I recognize that gaming trends are huge drivers of technological innovation. So, when a person like Peter Moore (corporate vice president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business) has something to say about the direction technology is heading, it’s time to listen.
“Let’s be fair. Whether it’s five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, the concept of driving to the store to buy a plastic disc with data on it and driving back and popping it in the drive will be ridiculous,” Moore said. “We’ll tell our grandchildren that and they’ll laugh at us.”
I’m already waiting for the shock factor when my kids are old enough to understand that there was no “Internet” when I was their age. Imagine, however, the incredulity of my future grandchildren when my kids try to explain “DVDs” and “CDs.” Wow, I’m already starting to feel like an antiquated dinosaur from the last millennium.
Read more: Industry icons get connected
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08.27.05
Outsourcing to … Fresno?
Forget outsourcing that project to Banglore. Send your work to “Small Town USA”.
ABC News: Small-Town USA May Offer Solution to Outsourcing
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07.21.05
Lost Productivity?
Does web surfing at work really cost American Business nearly $200 billion annually? This looks like another case of overhyped, poorly calculated statistics.
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